Conservatives and culture

Conservatives have been debating how to engage the popular culture for some time now, and that debate became more pronounced after the Governor Mitt Rommney’s loss to President Barack Obama in the last election.

Jonah Goldberg, in his latest “Goldberg File,” I think captures a lot of my thinking on the subject.

The thing I wanted to get to is that I think the way the Right talks about popular culture is deeply flawed. If conservatives are going to persuade non-conservatives to become more conservative — which is nearly the whole frickin’ point of the conservative movement — then going around wagging our fingers at every popular movie and TV show is probably not the best way to do it.

One way you persuade people to become more conservative is to explain to them how conservative they already are and build out from there. Persuasion is hard when your main argument is: “You’re a complete idiot and everything you think you know is ridiculous and/or evil.”

Moreover, there’s a Jedi-like Manichaeism running through youthful liberalism: The Light Side is liberal; the Dark Side is conservative. It’s like with little kids; tell them some food is good for them or that some dish has vegetables in it, and they’ll preemptively hate it and refuse to eat it like a jihadi at Gitmo dodging a spoonful of peach cobbler. Tell college kids that something is conservative and they’ll immediately assume it’s not for them. We can spend all day talking about how stupid this pose is, but that won’t do much for the cause.

The better way is to identify things that are popular and celebrate the conservative aspects of them. For instance, as I’ve written before, whenever a sitcom character gets pregnant, the producers make sure to talk up the character’s “right to choose.” But, at least since the painfully unfunny show Maude, the character always chooses to keep the baby, and once she does she acts like a pro-lifer. She talks to the fetus. She cares about what she eats. While NARAL considers what is in her belly to be nothing more than uterine contents, the mother-to-be gives those contents a name and acts like it’s already a member of the family. I understand a big part of the pro-life agenda is to make abortion illegal. I get that. But if you could get more people to think abortion is wrong it would A) be easier to make it illegal and B) less necessary to do so.

Or just think about crime. Going by what liberals say they believe about the criminal-justice system, never mind the War on Terror, they should be denouncing vast swaths of what Hollywood churns out. Cops play by their own rules. Good guys use outright torture to get valuable information in order to save lives. But with the exceptions of 24 and Zero Dark Thirty I can’t think of a time when the Left seriously complained about any of it.

Now if you point this out to some liberals, they’ll say that’s because “it’s just TV” or “it’s just a movie.” But you know that if a TV show or movie came out demonizing gays, they’d be screaming bloody murder.

My point is that the Left has quietly surrendered the argument over big chunks of the popular culture, and because they don’t complain about it, conservatives don’t press our advantage. We spend too much time reacting to liberal bait and liberal cues. We act like the opposition, being more against them than for anything of our own. One small place to start is to understand this is our culture too.

I would add that it would help if more conservatives contributed to the culture.

“For instance, as I’ve written before, whenever a sitcom character gets pregnant, the producers make sure to talk up the character’s “right to choose.” But, at least since the painfully unfunny show Maude, the character always chooses to keep the baby, and once she does she acts like a pro-lifer.”

… a pro-lifer. That’s where you guys get it wrong. She’s a mom who made a choice. What do you you expect her to do once she’s chosen to have the child?

Look, unlike what James Dobson and the rest might believe, no one thinks abortion is the greatest thing since apple pie. No one is pushing for more abortions. No one celebrates abortions (unless they’re incredibly shallow).

You all want the government to stay out of your lives. Why is it so hard for you to stay out of other people’s lives? If you did that, maybe you’d get one or two more votes.

I thought Maude was funny at times.

eNews & Updates

Sign up to receive breaking news as well as receive other site updates!